Highways in US East Coast areas braced for Hurricane Florence are congested with motorists fleeing "the storm of a lifetime". Up to 1.7 million people have been ordered to evacuate across South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. South Carolina authorities have turned four motorways into one-way routes away from the coast to speed the exodus. The category four storm with 130mph (215km/h) winds is forecast to make landfall early on Friday. Hurricane Florence could wreak more than $170bn (£130bn) of havoc, according to analytics firm CoreLogic. Its projection suggested the storm could damage nearly 759,000 homes and businesses from Charleston, South Carolina, to Virginia Beach, Virginia. A National Weather Service forecaster in Wilmington, North Carolina, said: "This will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast. "And that's saying a lot given the impacts we've seen from Hurricanes Diana, Hugo, Fran, Bonnie, Floyd and Matthew. "I can't emphasise enough the potential for unbelievable damage from wind, storm surge and inland flooding with this storm." As well as in the Carolinas and Virginia, states of emergency have been declared in Maryland and Washington DC amid concern over flooding. Jeff Byard, of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, urged people to flee before the hurricane hits. "This is not going to be a glancing blow," he said. "This is going to be be a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast." North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper warned citizens that a "disaster is at the doorstep", and that "tens of thousands" of buildings are likely to be flooded. But while many coastal residents have complied with mandatory evacuation orders, others are boarding up their homes and vowing to ride out the storm. In a video posted to his Twitter account on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump warned residents in Florence's bullseye to heed official warnings. "Get out of its way, don't play games with it, it's a big one, maybe as big as they've seen, and tremendous amounts of water," said Mr Trump. "Bad things can happen when you are talking about a storm this size. It's called Mother Nature. You never know, but we know. We love you all, we want you safe." What makes Florence so dangerous? Forecasters say the storm poses such a threat because it is expected to slow down and hover for nearly three days over the Carolina coast, before dipping south towards Georgia. It is forecast to bring 20-40in (50-100cm) of rain and life-threatening storm surges of up to 13ft (4m). Hurricane force winds will emanate up to 70 miles from the centre of the storm, say meteorologists, meaning the impact may be felt on shore well before Florence makes landfall early on Friday. National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham warned that rivers up to 40 miles inland may flood. Mr Graham said on Wednesday morning the Pamlico and Neuse rivers in North Carolina will see their flows "reversed" as storm surges push water back inland. He added that half of fatalities during hurricanes are caused by storm surges, and another quarter of deaths are due to inland rains and flooding. Is global warming to blame? The relationship between climate change and hurricanes is a complex one. Warmer seas power hurricanes. So as the temperature of ocean water goes up, we might expect the intensity of hurricanes to increase in future. A hotter atmosphere can also hold more water, so this should allow hurricanes to dump more water on affected areas. But there are so many factors that contribute to these rare events, it has been difficult to tease out clear trends from the data.

Algerian-born singer Rachid Taha has died of a heart attack at home in Paris aged 59, his family said. Taha was born on Algeria's north-west coast in 1958 and moved with his family to Lyon aged 10. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of Arabic-language group Carte de Séjour, which blended Western punk rock with Algerian Maghrebi music. Taha then went solo, and in 2004 covered The Clash's song Rock the Casbah. His other famous songs include a version of Douce France with Carte de Séjour, as well as his cover of song Ya Rayah as a solo artist. In a 2001 music festival review, the BBC described his work as a "seductive mixture of traditional North African, rock, techno and dance music". The singer first entered the music world when he opened a club in Lyon called Les Refoulés (The Rejects) in the late 1970s. Working as a DJ there, he reportedly mixed Arabic pop music with backing beats from bands like Led Zeppelin and Kraftwerk. Most famously, however, Taha cited cited British punk group The Clash as a major influence. He allegedly met them in 1981 and handed them a copy of his band's demo tape - which he later suggested may have influenced one of their most famous tracks. "A few months [after giving them the tape], I heard Rock the Casbah," he said in an interview with London-based newspaper The Guardian. "Maybe they did hear it after all." He would go on to perform his own version of the song with The Clash's Mick Jones years later. His work also appeared in several films. Barra Barra, a song from his album Made in Medina, notably appeared in the 2001 war film Black Hawk Down.

Controversial new copyright laws have been approved by members of the European Parliament. The legislation had been changed since July when the first version of the copyright directive was voted down. Critics say it remains problematic. Many musicians and creators claim the reforms are necessary to fairly compensate artists. But opponents fear that the plans could destroy user-generated content, memes and parodies. Leaders of the EU's member states still need to sign off on the rule changes before the individual countries have to draft local laws to put them into effect. The vote in Strasbourg was 438 in favour of the measures, 226 against and 39 abstentions. 'Link tax' MEPs voted on a series of changes to the original directive, the most controversial parts are known as Article 13 and Article 11. Article 13 puts the onus on web giants to take measures to ensure that agreements with rights holders for the use of their work are working. Critics say that would require all internet platforms to filter content put online by users, which many believe would be an excessive restriction on free speech. Article 11 is also controversial because it forces online platforms to pay news organisations for the use of their content. MEPs settled for a version of the directive that compromised on some of the methods news organisations will be able to use to charge web companies for links to content. The final version clarifies that this will not include the sharing of hyperlinks to content such as news stories. It also watered down a proposal for upload filters to automatically delete content that violates copyright. EU commissioners Andrus Ansip and Mariya Gabriel, who proposed the reform, said it was "an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernising the copyright rules in the European Union". Phil Sherrell, head of media, entertainment and sports at law firm Bird & Bird said: "Rights holders will be delighted as the directive provides them with additional rights and should strengthen their ability to negotiate royalty payments from online platforms that use their work." But, he added: "The devil remains in the detail; the next few months will see the EU Council get the directive into final form for it to be passed into law - potentially before Brexit - and there remain opportunities for those disappointed by today's vote to try to alter the drafting." And Shireen Permohamed, a partner at law firm Harbottle and Lewis said fears that Article 13 would affect the sharing of parodies and net memes were unfounded. "Although we have not yet seen the agreed text, an EU spokesperson has confirmed that any action taken by online platforms must be designed so that it doesn't catch legitimate use of content, such as permitted quotations or parodies," she told the BBC. Earlier this week, YouTube'sIts chief business officer Robert Kyncl said that endorsement of Article 13 risked "discouraging or even prohibiting platforms from hosting user-generated content". Musician Wyclef Jean also spoke out against the directive, appealing to MEPs before the vote to "embrace and improve the internet, rather than attempt to block and hinder it". But many other musicians, including Sir Paul McCartney, had expressed their support for the changes. Impala, the association for European independent music companies, said after the vote that it was "a great day for Europe's creators". Julia Reda, an MEP who has fought the changes, tweeted her disappointment that the two most controversial parts of the directive had been approved by fellow parliamentarians.

President Donald Trump has been criticised for hailing the US response to the deadly Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year as "tremendous". The mayor of its capital tweeted: "If he thinks the death of 3,000 people is a success God help us all." Puerto Rico only finished restoring full power last month, 11 months after the hurricane hit. A recent report says 8% left the island after the hurricane and many died due to poor health care and other services. The island's Governor Ricardo Rossello issued a statement on Tuesday night, describing Maria as "the worst natural disaster in our modern history. Our basic infrastructure was devastated, thousands of our people lost their lives and many others still struggle". Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the US, is home to some 3.3 million people. What did the president say? He was asked at the White House what lessons could be learned from Hurricane Maria as Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas. Maria, he said, was the "hardest one we had by far because of the island nature", adding: "I actually think it was one of the best jobs that's ever been done with respect to what this is all about. "The job that Fema [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and law enforcement and everybody did working along with the governor in Puerto Rico, I think was tremendous. I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success." Mr Trump had said recently: "We have put billions and billions of dollars into Puerto Rico and it was a very tough one. I think most of the people in Puerto Rico really appreciate what we've done." What has the response been to his latest comments? Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello said in a statement: "No relationship between a colony and the federal government can ever be called 'successful' because Puerto Ricans lack certain inalienable rights enjoyed by our fellow Americans in the states." The mayor of the Puerto Rican capital San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, a vocal critic of Mr Trump who earlier described his response to Maria as a "stain on his presidency", said his latest comment "added "insult to injury". Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted: "Nearly 3,000 people died. That is not a 'success'. That is a tragedy and a disgrace." Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said: "This is an offensive, hurtful and blatantly false comment from the president." New York Democratic primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said: "Some of my [Puerto Rico] family just got power a few weeks ago. People are developing respiratory issues partly due to airborne fungal spores from lack of proper cleanup. The admin's response to Puerto Rico has been a disaster." Some Trump supporters on social media accepted there had been failures but said the president had done all he could and that it was Puerto Rican officials who were to blame. What happened in Hurricane Maria? Maria made landfall in mid-September last year having just been downgraded to a category four hurricane, with winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) and driving rain. It caused catastrophic damage to the north-eastern Caribbean and was the most intense cyclone worldwide in 2017. Infrastructure was severely damaged in Puerto Rico and the territory struggled to make repairs to the power grid, only completing the work 11 months later. Maria was estimated to have caused $100bn (£77bn) in damage. For long the government there listed the death toll at only 64, although it acknowledged it was probably much higher. The island's authorities finally accepted a revised toll of 2,975 after a government-commissioned report by experts from George Washington University. This counted those who died in the six months following the storm as a result of poor healthcare and a lack of electricity and clean water. Repeated power cuts also led to an increased number of deaths from diabetes and sepsis. The report said that those from poorer backgrounds in Puerto Rico were 45% more likely to have been killed in the aftermath of the hurricane.

Future space tourists may be sipping champagne in orbit if a uniquely designed twin-chambered bottle with "egg cup" glasses proves a success. On Wednesday, a specially equipped aircraft will take off from the heart of the French champagne region to test the novel way of dispensing bubbly. The plane will make a series of steep climbs before plunging down to create 20-second intervals of weightlessness. The new bottle design was commissioned by the Mumm champagne house. Journalists from several countries were invited to try the champagne during Wednesday's flight on board the Airbus Zero-G plane. The wine, which sits in the upper portion of the bottle, is released with a finger-controlled valve that uses the champagne's own carbon dioxide to eject small amounts as foam. The journalists then get to consume the wine by scooping it out of the air using small long-stemmed glasses "They won't have to be performing any professional tasks on board, so they'll probably be able to drink a bit of alcohol," said astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, who heads the company which operates the Airbus Zero-G, ahead on the flight. The Mumm team say they hope it will be seen as a more elegant solution than consuming drink through a straw. The high-tech bottle, created by the French designer Octave de Gaulle, was not developed with professional astronauts in mind, as drinking alcohol is not permitted for those carrying out tasks on the International Space Station (ISS), for example. However, it is believed that the possibility of civilian space travel promoted by private operators such as Virgin Galactic and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin spacecraft could eventually provide a market for the product. Is drinking in space a good idea? Back in 1985, the US Federal Aviation Administration conducted a study that monitored whether alcohol consumed at simulated altitudes affected performances of complex tasks. In the study, 17 men were asked to consume vodka both at ground level and in a chamber that simulated an altitude of 12,500ft (3.7km). They were then asked to complete tasks including mental maths, tracking lights on an oscilloscope with a joystick, and a variety of other tests. The researchers found that there was no perceivable difference between the effect of alcohol on performance at ground level and in space.

Thieves who stole a gold, diamond-studded lunchbox that belonged to a former royal family were using it to eat their meals, Indian police say. The lunchbox, stolen last week, was recovered along with a ruby and gold teacup, saucer and teaspoon. Two men from the southern city of Hyderabad have been arrested. The items, valued at $7m (£5.4m), once belonged to Mir Osman Ali Khan, the last Nizam (king) of Hyderabad and once the richest man in the world. Police allege the two men had fled to the western city of Mumbai in the hopes of finding a buyer for the stolen goods where they lived a "fancy life" in a five-star hotel for a few days. However, they were unable to find a buyer and returned to Hyderabad where they were arrested after a massive manhunt. Officers had initially struggled to identify the robbers because they had turned off all 32 CCTV camera's in the Nizam's palace. However, a camera near the palace captured the two men on a motorbike. Police say they found the motorbike a few days later and that helped them identify the pair. The recovered items will be handed over to the Nizam Museum, which opened to the public in 2000. Its collection comprises expensive gifts given to Mir Osman Ali Khan in 1937. Khan ruled what was then India's largest princely state. He died in 1967. His fabled wealth included the world-famous Jacob's Diamond - which was the size of an egg - and many other pieces of exquisite jewellery.

Following a sneaky appearance at IFA 2018 earlier this month, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has now been photographed from the front. The photo isn't of the highest quality, as is often the case with such leaks, but the big (supposedly) 6.9-inch curved AMOLED display can still be seen in all its glory. In all their glory can also be seen the notch up top, as well as the side bezels, which do appear slightly thicker than previously suggested by leaked promo images and even a dummy unit of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. And speaking of the notch, the one on the Mate 20 Pro houses a 24MP, selfie camera, an earpiece, and new 3D face-scan tech that will supposedly allow the phone to use an authentication method similar to Apple's Face ID. On the back, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is said to have a triple camera setup, co-developed by Leica and nested in a somewhat unusual-looking square-shaped module. Huawei has already confirmed that it will officially unveil the Mate 20 Pro alongside the Mate 20 on October 16 in London. Sales of the two phones are expected to begin a couple of weeks after the announcement, before November rolls around.

Two new budget-friendly smartphones are about to make hit the shelves in the coming weeks, Samsung Galaxy J4 Prime and Galaxy J6 Prime. The phones might be introduced as Galaxy J4+ and J6+ in some markets, but they are likely to be the same specs-wise. We've reported about the Galaxy J6 Prime a few time in the past, but this is the first time that we get the chance to see what the phone looks like. Onleaks and 91Mobiles have just released a set of renders and a 360-degree video that show the phone from all angles. The phone that was briefly listed on Samsung's official website in Vietnam is expected to be unveiled soon. From what information we've been able to gather, the Galaxy J6 Prime is expected to boast a large 6-inch display with 1520 x 720 pixels resolution and 18.5:9 aspect ratio.

With the new 2018 Apple iPhone models expected to be unveiled tomorrow at Apple's "Gather round" event starting at 10am PDT, the company's 2017 handsets face a ban in South Korea. This all revolves around a patent infringement claim made by a company named KAIST. The latter says that it holds a patent on the FinFET technology used in the production of many of the chipsets found in mobile phones, including the A-series SoC's that power the iPhone. If the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy in South Korea upholds the validity of KAIST's patent, and agrees that Apple infringed on said patent, South Korea could ban Chinese and Hong Kong imports of the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPad 9.7-inch, and the iPad Pro (9.7-inch, 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch versions). Because this ruling by the South Korean regulatory agency will end up affecting many smartphone manufacturers, it turns out that Samsung is submitting evidence to the Korean agency refuting the validity of the patent. Yes, Sammy is trying to help Apple beat this infringement rap in South Korea. Oh, the irony. But the truth is, what is good for Apple in this particular situation is also good for Samsung and other phone producers. In addition, Samsung is fighting a similar case against KAIST in a U.S. court, and has already submitted evidence to that court that attempts to reject the patent's bona fides. "We cannot but pay attention to the litigation in the U.S. and South Korea involving Samsung Electronics although our current investigation is targeting Apple. This is because Samsung Electronics submitted evidence to refute the novelty of the patent, which is required for the patent to be regarded as being valid."-Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy The Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy is apparently having trouble reaching a conclusion; the regulatory agency has already extended the investigative period twice.

Most analysts expect that the top selling 2018 Apple iPhone model will be the more affordable 6.1-inch LCD unit that could be priced as high as $849 for the 64GB variant. Still, there does seem to be plenty of interest in the 6.5-inch iPhone that could be named the iPhone Xs Max. The latest rumors about this model indicate that it could weigh as much as 7.34 ounces. That would make it .20 ounces ahead of the similarly sized iPhone 8 Plus. The use of aluminum in the latter phone, compared to stainless steel on the new model, could explain most of the weight difference. But again, this is merely talk and we would take this measurement with a grain of salt. Another rumor states that the lightning port on the dual-SIM version of the iPhone Xs Max is flanked by four holes on one side, and seven holes on the other side. The Apple iPhone X, for comparison, has six holes on either side of the charging port. What can we make of this information? Does it indicate a return of the 3.5mm earphone jack? The answers are, "it could be simply a design choice," and "not likely" respectively. Remember all of the talk during the summer about Apple including its fast-charger in the box with the 2018 iPhones? Yesterday, reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo put the kibosh on that hope. Kuo says that inside the box of the 2018 iPhone models will be the same old 5W USB-A charging accessory. And there is also a new rumor concerning tomorrow's expected introduction of the Series 4 Apple Watch. The S4 processor powering the latest version of the timepiece, the S4, could be 64-bit. This would align the Apple Watch with the iPhone, iPad and Mac, all of which run on 64-bit processors. Don't forget that Apple's event starts tomorrow at 10am PDT (1pm EDT).

After more than three years on the market and a hardware refresh (in 2017), Nvidia is once again updating its Shield TV, bolstering its streaming set-top box (or console, if you prefer to call it that) with some key new features. Among them is support for 120Hz modes on TVs and monitors that support the high refresh rate. This is the 20th software upgrade since the Shield TV was introduced in 2015. It arrives just a few months after the latest version of the GeForce Now beta, bringing with it support for in-game voice chat for GeForce Now games like Fortnite, through the controller's 3.5mm headphone jack (you can now connect a mic to it). The new Shield Software Experience Upgrade 7.1 also brings back support for Nvidia Share, a feature that lets you capture screenshots, record game highlights, and stream to Twitch. Nvidia added a virtual keyboard and mouse companion as well, based on user feedback. The company notes this should "significantly cut down on login frustrations." Finally, Nvidia says users can expect smoother and more accurate mouse movements, keyboard shortcuts, and a row for keyboard and mouse games. This is a pretty robust update. It follows recent upgrades such as HDR video support, Google Assistant, a revamped UI, and a few other goodies, and is available now.

Blizzard’s job page is often an interesting place for inquisitive minds, offering up tiny glimpses into possible futures. Amid the vacancies for existing games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch are stacks of advertisements for unannounced projects. There are plenty related to a mystery Diablo project, but there are just as many openings for something new. Spotted by MMORPG, roles include a variety of artists, engineers and designers, but not necessarily all for the same game. Some, like the senior quest designer position, specifically mention mobile games, while others mention console and PC. Some say experience in both being desirable, which makes sense given Hearthstone’s cross-platform success. Some of the requirements and ‘pluses’ include things like a “passion for co-op games, RPGs and board games” and a “real passion for action games”. Blizzard is really into passion. Common threads include action, not surprisingly, and there’s mention of both first-person and third-person combat. There are a lot of job openings, and we could probably craft any number of games from the morsels and vague requirements, but there are definitely things that stand out and requirements that are mentioned often enough so that they start to hint at where Blizzard’s going with this. The responsibilities section of the lead/senior level designer position has quite a few details, and it mentions “world building from conception to the final stages of polish”. It sounds like Blizzard’s building another universe. If you’ve got the time, there’s loads to trawl through, and maybe a couple of things I missed. In the meantime, got any wild theories about what Blizzard’s unannounced project might be?

A surgeon accesses Tony’s aorta, allowing his body to be flushed with larger amounts of cold fluids, thereby inducing profound hypothermia — a body temperature below 10° C (50° F). This is suspended animation, a form of human hibernation, but officially the procedure is called Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation for Cardiac Arrest from Trauma (EPR-CAT). This chilly state, which constitutes the preservation component of Tony’s care, continues for an hour as surgeons repair injuries and connect his circulation to cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). This allows blood to move through the brain delivering oxygen at low doses appropriate for the sharply reduced metabolic rate that comes with the hypothermia, without depending on the heart and lungs. CPB also enables controlled, gradual re-warming of Tony’s body as fluid and appropriate amounts of red blood cells are transfused into him. After another hour or so, Tony’s body temperature reaches the range of 32-34° C (~90-93° F), called mild hypothermia. Having begun the fluid resuscitation process already, the team stops warming Tony, switches his circulation from CPB to his own heart and lungs, and begins cardiac resuscitation with electrical jolts to his heart. With his blood pressure stable, his heart rate slow but appropriate for the mild hypothermia, Tony is maintained at this intermediate temperature for 24 hours; this last step is already standard practice in treatment of people who suffer cardiac arrest without blood loss trauma. The purpose is to prevent brain damage that might come with the rapid influx of too much oxygen, just as a feast would mean death to a starvation victim. After he is warmed to a normal temperature of 37° C (~99° F), Tony is awakened and ultimately recovers with no brain damage. Tony’s case is fictional; EPR-CAT is not routine yet, but it’s going through clinical trials at the University of Maryland and the University of Pittsburgh, under the direction of trauma surgeon Dr. Samuel Tisherman, who spent many years developing the procedure in dogs and pigs. In such cases, patients undergo suspended animation for a couple of hours at most, but other treatments are showing promise in laboratory animals, like the use of hydrogen sulfide gas without active cooling to induce suspended animation in mice. Such interventions could ultimately fuse with EPR-CAT, sending the new technology further into what’s still the realm of science fiction – at least for now. Consider the scenario of a 5-year-old girl diagnosed with a progressive, incurable, terminal disease. Experts say that extended suspended animation – cooling patients in a stable state for months or years — could be possible at some point, although no one can predict when the technology will be clinical reality, since hydrogen sulfide and other chemical tactics would have to move into clinical use in humans and prove safe and effective in combination with EPR-CAT, or with a similar cooling approach. How Could Long-Term Suspended Animation Impact Humanity? Consider the scenario of a 5-year-old girl diagnosed with a progressive, incurable, terminal disease. Since available treatments would only lengthen the projected survival by a year, she is placed into suspended animation. She is revived partially every few years, as new treatments become available that can have a major impact on her disease. After 35 years of this, she is revived completely as treatments are finally adequate to cure her condition, but biologically she has aged only a few months. Physically, she is normal now, though her parents are in their seventies, and her siblings are grown and married. Such hypothetical scenarios raise many issues: Where will the resources come from to take care of patients for that long? Who will pay? And how will patients adapt when they emerge into a completely different world? “Heavy resource utilization is a factor if you’ve got people hibernating for years or decades,” says Bradford Winters, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, and assistant professor of neurological surgery at Johns Hopkins. Conceivably, special high-tech facilities with robots and artificial intelligence watching over the hibernators might solve the resource issue, but even then, Winters notes that long-term hibernation would entail major disparities between the wealthy and poor. “And then there is the psychological effect of being disconnected from one’s family and society for a generation or more,” he says. “What happens to that 5-year-old waking to her retired parents and married siblings? Will her younger sister adopt her? What would that be like?” Probably better than dying is one answer. Back on Earth, human hibernation would raise daunting policy questions that may take many years to resolve. Outside of medicine, one application of human hibernation that has intrigued generations of science fiction writers is in long-duration space travel. During a voyage lasting years or decades, space explorers or colonists not only could avoid long periods of potential boredom, but also the aging process. Considering that the alternative to “sleeper ships” would be multi-generation starships so large that they’d be like small worlds, human hibernation in spaceflight could become an enabling technology for interstellar flight. Big Questions: It’s Not Too Early to Ask Back on Earth, the daunting policy questions may take many years to resolve. Society ought to be aware of them now, before human hibernation technology outpaces its dramatic implications. “Our current framework of ethical and legal regulation is adequate for cases like the gunshot victim who is chilled deeply for a few hours. Short-term cryopreservation is currently part of the continuum of care,” notes David N. Hoffman, a clinical ethicist and health care attorney who teaches at Columbia University, and at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “But we’ll need a new framework when there’s a capability to cryopreserve people for many years and still bring them back. There’s also a legal-ethical issue involving the parties that decide to put the person into hibernation versus the patient wishes in terms of what risk benefit ratio they would accept, and who is responsible for the expense and burdens associated with cases that don’t turn out just right?” To begin thinking about practical solutions, Hoffman characterizes long-term human hibernation as an extension of the ethics of cyro-preserved embryos that are held for potential parents, often for long periods of time. But the human hibernation issue is much more complex. “The ability of the custodian and patient to enter into a meaningful and beneficial arrangement is fraught, because medical advances necessary to address the person’s illness or injury are — by definition — unknown,” says Hoffman. “It means that you need a third party, a surrogate, to act on opportunities that the patient could never have contemplated.” Such multigenerational considerations might become more manageable, of course, in an era when gene therapy, bionic parts, and genetically engineered replacement organs enable dramatic life extension. But if people will be living for centuries regardless of whether or not they hibernate, then developing the medical technology may be the least of the challenges.

With Hurricane Florence expected to bring Category 3/4 winds and rain to the Carolinas late Thursday or early Friday, Verizon is taking action. The nation's largest carrier has already announced that its customers most impacted by the storm, regardless if they are postpaid or pre-paid subscribers, will receive free talk, text and data. Verizon will provide more information about the duration of its free services, and the areas in which they will be available, once it can assess the actual damage caused by the powerful storm. And to prevent first responders from having their Verizon service throttled, data speed cap restrictions have already been lifted for police, fire and other rescue agencies in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. You might recall that last month, Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden accused Verizon of throttling the internet connection belonging to an important fire-fighting vehicle. Verizon throttled that account from 50Mbps to about 30kbps because the unlimited account had consumed over 25GB of data during its billing cycle. Verizon offered to eliminate the throttling if the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District signed up for a new plan at twice the monthly cost it was paying. "People rely on our network every day to stay connected to loved ones and that need increases when a disaster strikes. As residents prepare for Hurricane Florence, waiting out long lines at grocery stores and supply stores, or even evacuating, the last thing they want to worry about is billing overages. This is just one way we can help residents as this potentially dangerous storm challenges the Southeast coast."-Russ Preite, president, Southeast Market, Verizon Wireless Big Red was indeed very red in the face when this got out and dropped the speed cap restrictions for public safety customers battling any future disaster. It also said that it would unveil a new unlimited plan designed just for first responders in early September. So far, this new plan has not been introduced by Verizon.

Keeping true to the promises it made back in November of last year, Verizon has confirmed that its first 5G broadband internet service will go live in just a matter of weeks. Once this happens, it will become the first commercial 5G service to launch in both the US and in the world. The exact date will be October 1, which is when Verizon will commence installations. Fortunately, as soon as these are complete, the new service will be live and available to use for those who have ordered it. Speaking of which, the number 1 carrier has confirmed that the service will be available to order starting this Thursday, September 13. Initially, though, it will only be available in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. In regards to how much the new service will cost, Verizon will be offerings its current customers the new service for $50 per month, with taxes and other fees already included and no requirement of an annual contract. Separately, non-Verizon customers will also be able to sign up, although they will have to pay a little bit extra – $70 each month, to be precise. Regardless of which carrier consumers belong to, though, the company will be offering quite a few extras to those who sign up early for 5G Home Broadband. Specifically, the first three months of the service will be completely free. This will then be bundled with three months of free YouTube TV and a complimentary Apple TV 4K or Chromecast Ultra. Also, there will be no installation fees. While this launch does technically give Verizon the bragging rights to the first 5G service, it’s worth noting that the company isn’t using the industry standard that was finalized last year. Instead, the carrier has chosen to use technology based on its own standards in order to speed up the launch process. Nevertheless, Verizon will eventually switch over to the industry standard and, once it does, its service will expand to other markets. Also, existing customers will get free upgrades as soon as this happens.

According to a new rumor, Warner Bros. requested digital mock-ups for The Batman featuring Kit Harington as the caped crusader. Beyond Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) being set to write and direct, we still know very little about the next solo Batman movie. In fact, we aren't even certain whether or not Ben Affleck will be in it. Affleck first played Bruce Wayne in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and returned to the role in last year's Justice League. He was originally going to write and direct The Batman himself, but is now only producing (and possibly starring) in the movie. We recently learned that The Batman is set to begin filming in spring 2019, so hopefully it won't be too much longer before we get some concrete casting news. In the meantime, all we have are rumors - though this latest rumor is pretty interesting. According to Revenge of the Fans, this summer Warner Bros. requested digital mock-ups for The Batman featuring two actors. One of the actors was not revealed, but the other was Kit Harington, who is currently best known for playing Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. It's important to note that this doesn't mean Harington is, or ever has has been, in formal talks to play a young Bruce Wayne in The Batman. It's not uncommon for concept art and previsualization work to begin before casting, and studios will often request digital mock-ups featuring actors who generally fit the role. Revenge of the Fans' Editor-in-Chief, Mario-Francisco Robles, notes that "there’s no reason to believe this went anywhere. It may have, and it may not have." In fact, he doesn't even think that Harington is the most likely of the two actors whose mock-ups were requested: What’s interesting about the other actor - the one I’m not comfortable sharing just yet - is that he’s far closer to the Affleck mold than any of these other names I’ve heard. Because of that, I think he may end up being the actual frontrunner - which is why I don’t want to run it until I’m absolutely positive. We know that Reeves' script for The Batman focuses on a young Bruce Wayne in his early days as a superhero, so Harington would fit the bill - especially since his Game of Thrones filming commitments are finally over. However, this a highly coveted role and there are a lot of eager young actors with strong jawlines in Hollywood, so Harington has some steep competition. We'll keep you updated on any further casting developments as The Batman creeps closer to the start of production. KEY RELEASE DATES Aquaman (2018) release date: Dec 21, 2018 Joker (2019) release date: Oct 04, 2019 Wonder Woman 2 (2019) release date: Nov 01, 2019 Shazam! (2019) release date: Apr 05, 2019

THE PREDATOR AIMS TO REVITALIZE THE SCI-FI ACTION FRANCHISE WITH FRESH IDEAS, BUT SUCCEEDS AT DELIVERING MINDLESS ACTION MORE THAN COHESIVE MYTHOLOGY. More than thirty years after he met a grisly fate onscreen as the jokester Rick Hawkins in John McTiernan's 1987 film Predator, Shane Black returns to the property on the opposite side of the camera, as the director of The Predator. A soft reboot/sequel or "requel" to the three Predator films before it (not counting the two Alien vs. Predator crossovers), Black's movie offers a new beginning for the series after Nimród Antal's 2010 entry Predators tried to take the brand in a different direction, but failed to get a followup. Unfortunately, the end result here is a mixed bag that's hamstrung by clunky execution and a general messiness. The Predator aims to revitalize the sci-fi action franchise with fresh ideas, but succeeds at delivering mindless action more than cohesive mythology. Black's film takes place in the present-day and begins shortly after a Predator spaceship comes crashing down into earth's atmosphere. When U.S. sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) encounters the ship's pilot during a mission in Mexico, the creature is quick to kill his men and nearly slaughters Quinn before he manages to stop it - thus allowing the U.S. government to capture the Predator, instead. Aware that his bosses will do whatever is needed to keep this incident under-wraps, Quinn secretly takes some of the Predator's equipment as leverage and mails it to his ex-wife Emily (Yvonne Strahovski) and son Rory (Jacob Tremblay), the latter of whom's on the autism spectrum. Later, during a post-mission "psych evaluation", Quinn admits to having encountered the Predator and is committed to a group of psychologically-damaged soldiers by Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), a government agent who knows all too well about the extraterrestrials' history on our planet. However, when the creature escapes from the clandestine research facility run by Traeger, it falls to Quinn, his newfound squad and a scientist named Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) to handle the situation themselves. Meanwhile, back in the suburbs, Rory is able to activate the Predator's gadgetry and, in doing so, inadvertently summons something to our world that's far more dangerous than your average, run of the mill alien hunter... There are very much shades of Black's previous work in The Predator, whether it's the main story about a ragtag group trying to save the earth (a la 1987's The Monster Squad, which Black also cowrote with Fred Dekker) or the subplot involving a larger government conspiracy to keep dangerous information hidden from the public (see Black's last movie, The Nice Guys). However, in addition to those narrative elements, The Predator attempts to cram in not only backstory details for its many human characters, but also a good deal of exposition concerning why these alien sport hunters keep returning to earth and what they are really trying to do. While there is some genuinely fascinating world-building here, the resulting film comes off feeling overstuffed and suffers from pacing issues. Moreover, The Predator feels like it was chopped down and condensed from a longer cut that flowed better, but was awkwardly compressed into a more streamlined (and shorter) blockbuster thrill ride bolstered by Black's trademark dark humor. Story issues aside, though, The Predator certainly delivers the goods when it comes to bloody Predator-related mayhem. With the aid of sharp cinematography by Zack Snyder's frequent collaborator Larry Fong, Black serves up lots of R-rated violence, some inventive kills and otherwise unique set pieces and action sequences throughout the first two-thirds of the film. While the third act is rougher around the edges (no doubt because the movie's original third act was entirely reshot), The Predator still manages to deliver a climax that's noticeably different from any Predator installment before it and provides some important payoffs to character threads along the way. The film also offers its fair share of fan service and nods to Predator movies past - down to a rousing score by Henry Jackman (Kick-Ass, Kingsman) that successfully channels the spirit of Alan Silvestri's iconic Predator music - without (usually) being too ham-fisted about it. With all the world-building and spectacle going on, The Predator is unsurprisingly hit or miss when it comes to developing its human players. The standouts here includes Brown as the film's human antagonist (a role he appears to relish) and Tremblay as yet another charmingly precocious young boy after his turns in Room and Wonder. Munn is similarly noteworthy here and further proves her action star bonafides as Dr. Bracket - a character who, frankly, could (should?) have served as the film's primary hero and main protagonist. Unfortunately, Bracket is often sidelined in order to make room for the more archetypical Predator movie (male) lead McKenna and a crew of stock sidekicks that includes Trevante Rhodes as "the unstable one", Keegan-Michael Key as "the funny one" and Thomas Jane as "the troubled one". While these characters benefit from being played by talented actors and do get simple-but-clean arcs, the other soldiers (as played by Alfie Allen and Augusto Aguilera) and Emily ultimately get the short end of the stick. All in all, The Predator is the "biggest" Predator movie yet, but falls well short of being the best installment in the series. Whether it's the result of reshoots or merely being too big for its britches, Black's "requel" is muddled in execution and provides loads of brainless thrills while struggling in the story and character departments. Still, the Predator franchise has always offered a pulpy blend of action, sci-fi, cheesy jokes and (alien) monster horror, and Black's film smartly doesn't try to change things in that regard. Longtime fans may further appreciate how The Predator attempts to move the property forward without jettisoning its previously established lore on the way (see also: how it brings back the Hell-Hounds and features Jake Busey playing the son of his father Gary Busey's Predator 2 character). Fox's decision to move The Predator to a mid-September release also makes sense, for related reasons. While the project would have struggled to go toe-to-toe with the better crafted franchise movies released this summer (as well as some of the tentpoles that hit the scene back in the spring), it's still a couple notches above the forgettable genre titles that are being "dumped" in theaters this month. That doesn't make The Predator a must-see by default, but the film's visuals do benefit from being experienced on the big screen (though an IMAX showing might be overkill) - and, in the end, anyone who just wants to watch Predators mowing down humans for almost two hours will mostly get their money's worth from this one.

SwRI scientist studied the binary asteroid Patroclus-Menoetius, shown in this artist’s conception, to determine that a shake-up of the giant planets likely happened early in the solar system’s history, within the first 100 million years. Scientists at Southwest Research Institute studied an unusual pair of asteroids and discovered that their existence points to an early planetary rearrangement in our solar system. These bodies, called Patroclus and Menoetius, are targets of NASA's upcoming Lucy mission. They are around 70 miles wide and orbit around each other as they collectively circle the Sun. They are the only large binary known in the population of ancient bodies referred to as the Trojan asteroids. The two swarms of Trojans orbit at roughly the same distance from the Sun as Jupiter, one swarm orbiting ahead of, and the other trailing, the gas giant. "The Trojans were likely captured during a dramatic period of dynamic instability when a skirmish between the solar system's giant planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- occurred," said SwRI Institute Scientist Dr. David Nesvorny. He is the lead author of the paper, "Evidence for Very Early Migration of the Solar System Planets from the Patroclus-Menoetius Binary Jupiter Trojan," published in Nature Astronomy. This shake-up pushed Uranus and Neptune outwards, where they encountered a large primordial population of small bodies thought to be the source of today's Kuiper Belt objects, which orbit at the edge of the solar system. "Many small bodies of this primordial Kuiper Belt were scattered inwards, and a few of those became trapped as Trojan asteroids." A key issue with this solar system evolution model, however, has been when it took place. In this paper, scientists demonstrate that the very existence of the Patroclus-Menoetius pair indicates that the dynamic instability among the giant planets must have occurred within the first 100 million years of the solar system formation. Recent models of small body formation suggest that these types of binaries are leftovers of the very earliest times of our solar system, when pairs of small bodies could form directly from a collapsing cloud of "pebbles." "Observations of today's Kuiper Belt show that binaries like these were quite common in ancient times," said Dr. William Bottke, director of SwRI's Space Studies Department, who coauthored the paper. "Only a few of them now exist within the orbit of Neptune. The question is how to interpret the survivors." Had the instability been delayed many hundreds of millions of years, as suggested by some solar system evolution models, collisions within the primordial small-body disk would have disrupted these relatively fragile binaries, leaving none to be captured in the Trojan population. Earlier dynamical instabilities would have left more binaries intact, increasing the likelihood that at least one would have been captured in the Trojan population. The team created new models that show that the existence of the Patroclus-Menoetius binary strongly indicates an earlier instability. This early dynamical instability model has important consequences for the terrestrial planets, particularly regarding the origin of large impact craters on the Moon, Mercury and Mars that formed approximately 4 billion years ago. The impactors that made these craters are less likely to have been flung in from the outer regions of the Solar System. This could imply they were made by small-body leftovers of the terrestrial planet formation process. This work underscores the importance of the Trojan asteroids in illuminating the history of our solar system. Much more will be learned about Patroclus-Menoetius binary when NASA's Lucy mission, led by SwRI scientist and paper coauthor Dr. Hal Levison, surveys the pair in 2033, culminating a 12-year mission to tour both Trojan swarms.

An international team led by Assistant Professor Kasper Steen Pedersen, DTU Chemistry, has synthesized a novel nano material with electrical and magnetic properties making it suitable for future quantum computers and other applications in electronics. Chromium-Chloride-Pyrazine (chemical formula CrCl2(pyrazine)2) is a layered material, which is a precursor for a so-called 2D material. In principle, a 2D material has a thickness of just a single molecule and this often leads to properties very different from those of the same material in a normal 3D version. Not least will the electrical properties differ. While in a 3D material, electrons are able to take any direction, in a 2D material they will be restricted to moving horizontally -- as long as the wavelength of the electron is longer than the thickness of the 2D layer. Organic/inorganic hybrid Graphene is the most well-known 2D material. Graphene consists of carbon atoms in a lattice structure, which yields it remarkable strength. Since the first synthesis of graphene in 2004, hundreds of other 2D materials have been synthesized, some of which may be candidates for quantum electronics applications. However, the novel material is based on a very different concept. While the other candidates are all inorganic -- just like graphene -- Chromium-Chloride-Pyrazine is an organic/inorganic hybrid material. "The material marks a new type of chemistry, in which we are able to replace various building blocks in the material and thereby modify its physical and chemical properties. This can not be done in graphene. For example, one can't choose to replace half the carbon atoms in graphene with another kind of atoms. Our approach allows designing properties much more accurately than known in other 2D materials," Kasper Steen Pedersen explains. Besides the electrical properties, also the magnetic properties in Chromium-Chloride-Pyrazine can be accurately designed. This is especially relevant in relation to "spintronics." "While in normal electronics, only the charge of the electrons is utilized, also their spin -- which is a quantum mechanical property -- is used in spintronics. This is highly interesting for quantum computing applications. Therefore, development of nano-scale materials which are both conducting and magnetic is most relevant," Kasper Steen Pedersen notes. A new world of 2D materials Besides for quantum computing, Chromium-Chloride-Pyrazine may be of interest in future superconductors, catalysts, batteries, fuel cells, and electronics in general. Still, companies are not keen to begin producing the material right away, the researcher stresses: "Not yet, at least! This is still fundamental research. Since we are suggesting a material synthesized from an entirely novel approach, a number of questions remain unanswered. For instance, we are not yet able to determine the degree of stability of the material in various applications. However, even if Chromium-Chloride-Pyrazine should for some reason prove unfit for the various possible applications, the new principles behind its synthesis will still be relevant. This is the door to a new world of more advanced 2D materials opening up."

An Arizona State University research team has released new insights about intergranular stress-corrosion cracking (SCC), an environmental cause of premature failure in engineered structures, including bridges, aircraft and nuclear power generating plants. The research, Decoupling the role of stress and corrosion in the intergranular cracking of noble alloys, released today in Nature Materials, addresses the assumption that intergranular SCC is the result of the simultaneous presence of a tensile stress and corrosion, and demonstrates that the roles of stress and corrosion can be decoupled, or can act independently. "The finding is the culmination of about 30 years' work on this kind of stress corrosion problem," said lead researcher Karl Sieradzki, a professor of materials science and engineering at ASU. "We now have a view into how new alloys can be designed to avoid this form of stress corrosion-induced failure." When metals are exposed to water containing salts, the strength of the metal can be severely compromised and lead to unexpected failure. An example of a SCC failure is the 2003 Kinder Morgan gasoline pipeline in Tucson, AZ. The conventional paradigm for understanding SCC conditions is the simultaneous presence of a sufficient level of tensile stress, a corrosive environment and a susceptible material. The research challenges this viewpoint and illustrates that the simultaneous presence of stress and a corrosive environment is not a requirement for SCC, and that it can occur if the corrosion happens first and the material is subsequently subjected to stress. In addition to Sieradzki, the paper's authors include Nilesh Badwe, Xiying Chen, Erin Karasz, and Ariana Tse from ASU and Daniel Schreiber, Matthew Olszta, Nicole Overman and Stephen Bruemmer from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. The team examined the behavior of a laboratory model silver-gold alloy, which mimics the corrosion behavior of important engineering alloys, such as stainless steels and nickel-base alloys used in nuclear power plants. Corrosion in these engineering alloys, as in the model silver-gold alloy, results in the formation of nanometer-sized holes within the corroded layer. According to Sieradzki, the key parameter determining the occurrence of rapid SCC is the adhesion between the corroded layer and the un-corroded alloy. Using the atomic scale techniques of high-resolution electron microscopy and atom probe tomography, together with statistical characterizations, the team determined that the apparent requirement for the simultaneous presence of stress and corrosion exists because of time-dependent morphology changes that affect adhesion. As long as adequate adhesion between the layers is maintained, a crack that starts with the corroded layer may penetrate into the uncorroded alloy. This means that there can be a significant mechanical component to stress corrosion cracking that cannot be identified by any measurement of corrosion. The result is that a corrosion measurement can underestimate the rate of SCC by multiplicative factors of 10 or more. "In nuclear plants, SCC maintenance and plant shut downs are based on previous experience with similarly designed reactors," Sieradzki explained. "While we are not building new nuclear plants in the U.S., these findings should trigger the search for new, corrosion resistant alloys that can be used for replacement parts in existing plants and in other important structural applications."

Scientists have developed a photoelectrode that can harvest 85 percent of visible light in a 30 nanometers-thin semiconductor layer between gold layers, converting light energy 11 times more efficiently than previous methods. In the pursuit of realizing a sustainable society, there is an ever-increasing demand to develop revolutionary solar cells or artificial photosynthesis systems that utilize visible light energy from the sun while using as few materials as possible. The research team, led by Professor Hiroaki Misawa of the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University, has been aiming to develop a photoelectrode that can harvest visible light across a wide spectral range by using gold nanoparticles loaded on a semiconductor. But merely applying a layer of gold nanoparticles did not lead to a sufficient amount of light absorption, because they took in light with only a narrow spectral range. In the study published in Nature Nanotechnology, the research team sandwiched a semiconductor, a 30-nanometer titanium dioxide thin-film, between a 100-nanometer gold film and gold nanoparticles to enhance light absorption. When the system is irradiated by light from the gold nanoparticle side, the gold film worked as a mirror, trapping the light in a cavity between two gold layers and helping the nanoparticles absorb more light. To their surprise, more than 85 percent of all visible light was harvested by the photoelectrode, which was far more efficient than previous methods. Gold nanoparticles are known to exhibit a phenomenon called localized plasmon resonance which absorbs a certain wavelength of light. "Our photoelectrode successfully created a new condition in which plasmon and visible light trapped in the titanium oxide layer strongly interact, allowing light with a broad range of wavelengths to be absorbed by gold nanoparticles," says Hiroaki Misawa. When gold nanoparticles absorb light, the additional energy triggers electron excitation in the gold, which transfers electrons to the semiconductor. "The light energy conversion efficiency is 11 times higher than those without light-trapping functions," Misawa explained. The boosted efficiency also led to an enhanced water splitting: the electrons reduced hydrogen ions to hydrogen, while the remaining electron holes oxidized water to produce oxygen -- a promising process to yield clean energy. "Using very small amounts of material, this photoelectrode enables an efficient conversion of sunlight into renewable energy, further contributing to the realization of a sustainable society," the researchers concluded.

In the device, which is about the size of a fingernail, clusters of diamond nanocrystals (black spots) sit atop a material called a multiferroic. The multiferroic transmits microwave energy into the crystals much more efficiently than other methods. UC Berkeley engineers have created a device that dramatically reduces the energy needed to power magnetic field detectors, which could revolutionize how we measure the magnetic fields that flow through our electronics, our planet, and even our bodies. "The best magnetic sensors out there today are bulky, only operate at extreme temperatures, and can cost tens of thousands of dollars," said Dominic Labanowski, who helped create the device, which is made from nitrogen-infused diamonds, as a postdoctoral researcher in the department of electrical engineering and computer science. "Our sensors could replace those more difficult-to-use sensors in a lot of applications from navigation to medical imaging to natural resource exploration." Each time a diamond-based sensor measures a magnetic field, it must first be blasted with 1 to 10 Watts of microwave radiation to prime them to be sensitive to magnetic fields, which is enough power to melt electronic components. The researchers found a new way to excite tiny diamonds with microwaves using 1000 times less power, making it feasible to create magnetic-sensing devices that can fit into electronics like cell phones. This work was led by Sayeef Salahuddin's lab at UC Berkeley in collaboration with researchers from the Ohio State University. The team reports their device online Sep. 7 in the journal Science Advances. Defective Diamonds Bombarding a diamond with a jet of nitrogen gas can knock out some of its highly ordered carbon atoms, replacing them with nitrogen atoms. These nitrogen interlopers -- called nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers -- have unique properties that are well-understood by scientists. "You can use these NV centers as very powerful sensors, but traditionally their applications have been limited because it takes a lot of power to read them," said Labanowski. To detect magnetic fields, scientists first have to hit the NV centers with high-powered microwave radiation, equal to about one-hundredth the power of your standard microwave or ten times the power consumed by an average cell phone. They then illuminate the NV centers with a laser, which is absorbed and emitted by the nitrogen atoms. The strength of the magnetic field is related to the strength of the emitted laser light: the intensity of the emitted light can be used to measure the field strength To create the device, the researchers placed diamond nanocrystals -- containing thousands of NV centers apiece -- onto a film called a multiferroic. This new type of material is capable of transferring microwave energy to the crystals much more efficiently. "This technique dramatically lowers the power consumption of the sensors and makes them usable for realistic applications," Labanowski said. Imaging Inside the Body and Under the Earth Medical applications of magnetic sensors include magnetoencephalography, which uses magnetic fields to measure brain waves, or magnetocardiography, which uses magnetic fields to image heart function. Currently these machines are the size of a small room and can cost upwards of $3 million. "With low-power NV sensors, you could imagine taking a room-sized magnetoencephalography machine and turning it into something like a helmet, dramatically reducing the size and the costs," Labanowski said. The sensors could also be placed in planes or drones to aid in spotting rare earth metals underground, or used in cell phones to improve navigation. Magnetic field detection is just one application of NV centers, Salahuddin says. The team is planning to refine their technology to use NV centers and other types of quantum systems in a wide variety of applications. "While we emphasized magnetic field sensing, our work could lead to electrical manipulation of quantum systems in general with much broader areas of application including quantum computing," Salahuddin said.

Artist's rendering of the core of the apparatus. A system made of just a handful of particles acts just like larger systems, allowing scientists to study quantum behaviour more easily. Most substances physicists study are made up of huge numbers of particles -- so large that there is essentially no difference between the behavioural properties of a drop or a swimming pool's worth of pure water. Even a single drop can contain more than a quadrillion particles. This makes understanding their collective behaviour relatively easy. For example, both the water in the drop and in the pool will freeze at 0 degrees Celsius and boil at 100 degrees Celsius. Such 'phase transitions' (i.e. from liquid to solid or from liquid to gas) can appear abrupt in these large systems, because so many particles are involved that they all appear to act at once. But what about in far smaller systems? When there are only a handful of particles, do the same rules of phase transitions apply? To answer these questions, a team of scientists from Imperial College London, the University of Oxford and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, made a system of less than 10 photons, the fundamental particles of light. The results of their experiments, published today in Nature Physics, show that phase transitions still occur in systems made up of as few as seven particles on average. Studying quantum behaviour of particles is much easier with fewer particles, so the fact that phase transitions occur in these small systems means scientists are better able to study quantum properties such as coherence. Lead author Dr Robert Nyman, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, said: "Now that it's confirmed that 'phase transition' is still a useful concept in such small systems, we can explore properties in ways that would not be possible in larger systems. "In particular, we can study the quantum properties of matter and light -- what happens at the smallest scale when phase transitions occur." The system the team studied was a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of photons. BECs form when a gas of quantum particles are so cold or so close together that they can no longer be distinguished. A BEC is a state of matter that has very different properties from solids, liquids, gases or plasmas. The team found that by adding photons to the system, a phase transition to a BEC would occur once the system reached around seven photons, fewer than in any other BEC seen before. Being so small, the transition was less abrupt than in larger systems like pools of water, but the fact that the transition occurred at a predictable point mirrors larger systems well. The system was created with a simple apparatus -- some fluorescent dye and curved mirrors. This means that as well as being useful in the study of quantum properties, the system could be used to create and manipulate special states of light. Co-author Dr Florian Mintert, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, said: "With the best of two distinct worlds -- the physics of phase transitions and the accessibility of small systems -- this unusual light source has potential applications in measurement or sensing."

The diagram shows the beneficial magnetic distortion as color-shaded regions on the smooth doughnut-shaped surface of the KSTAR plasma, together with the external 3D field coils in blue and red used to generate the distortion.Fusion, the power that drives the sun and stars, produces massive amounts of energy. Scientists here on Earth seek to replicate this process, which merges light elements in the form of hot, charged plasma composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, to create a virtually inexhaustible supply of power to generate electricity in what may be called a "star in a jar." A long-time puzzle in the effort to capture the power of fusion on Earth is how to lessen or eliminate a common instability that occurs in the plasma called edge localized modes (ELMs). Just as the sun releases enormous bursts of energy in the form of solar flares, so flare-like bursts of ELMs can slam into the walls of doughnut-shaped tokamaks that house fusion reactions, potentially damaging the walls of the reactor. Ripples control new bursts To control these bursts, scientists disturb the plasma with small magnetic ripples called resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) that distort the smooth, doughnut shape of the plasma -- releasing excess pressure that lessens or prevents ELMs from occurring. The hard part is producing just the right amount of this 3D distortion to eliminate the ELMs without triggering other instabilities and releasing too much energy that, in the worst case, can lead to a major disruption that terminates the plasma. Making the task exceptionally difficult is the fact that a virtually limitless number of magnetic distortions can be applied to the plasma, causing finding precisely the right kind of distortion to be an extraordinary challenge. But no longer. Physicist Jong-Kyu Park of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), working with a team of collaborators from the United States and the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in Korea, have successfully predicted the entire set of beneficial 3D distortions for controlling ELMs without creating more problems. Researchers validated these predictions on the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) facility, one of the world's most advanced superconducting tokamaks, located in Daejeon, South Korea. KSTAR ideal for tests KSTAR was ideal for testing the predictions because of its advanced magnet controls for generating precise distortions in the near-perfect, doughnut-shaped symmetry of the plasma. Identifying the most beneficial distortions, which amount to less than one percent of all the possible distortions that could be produced inside KSTAR, would have been virtually impossible without the predictive model developed by the research team. The result was a precedent-setting achievement. "We show for the first time the full 3D field operating window in a tokamak to suppress ELMs without stirring up core instabilities or excessively degrading confinement," said Park, whose paper -- written with 14 coauthors from the United States and South Korea -- is published in Nature Physics. "For a long time we thought it would be too computationally difficult to identify all beneficial symmetry-breaking fields, but our work now demonstrates a simple procedure to identify the set of all such configurations." Researchers reduced the complexity of the calculations when they realized that the number of ways the plasma can distort is actually far fewer than the range of possible 3D fields that can be applied to the plasma. By working backwards, from distortions to 3D fields, the authors calculated the most effective fields for eliminating ELMs. The KSTAR experiments confirmed the predictions with remarkable accuracy. Findings provide new confidence The findings on KSTAR provide new confidence in the ability to predict optimal 3D fields for ITER, the international tokamak under construction in France, which plans to employ special magnets to produce 3D distortions to control ELMs. Such control will be vital for ITER, whose goal is to produce 10 times more energy than it will take to heat the plasma. Said authors of the paper, "the method and principle adopted in this study can substantially improve the efficiency and fidelity of the complicated 3D optimizing process in tokamaks."

Graphene converts electronic signals with frequencies in the gigahertz range extremely efficiently into signals with several times higher frequency. Graphene -- an ultrathin material consisting of a single layer of interlinked carbon atoms -- is considered a promising candidate for the nanoelectronics of the future. In theory, it should allow clock rates up to a thousand times faster than today's silicon-based electronics. Scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P), have now shown for the first time that graphene can actually convert electronic signals with frequencies in the gigahertz range -- which correspond to today's clock rates -- extremely efficiently into signals with several times higher frequency. The researchers present their results in the scientific journal Nature. Today's silicon-based electronic components operate at clock rates of several hundred gigahertz (GHz), that is, they are switching several billion times per second. The electronics industry is currently trying to access the terahertz (THz) range, i.e., up to thousand times faster clock rates. A promising material and potential successor to silicon could be graphene, which has a high electrical conductivity and is compatible with all existing electronic technologies. In particular, theory has long predicted that graphene could be a very efficient "nonlinear" electronic material, i.e., a material that can very efficiently convert an applied oscillating electromagnetic field into fields with a much higher frequency. However, all experimental efforts to prove this effect in graphene over the past ten years have not been successful. "We have now been able to provide the first direct proof of frequency multiplication from gigahertz to terahertz in a graphene monolayer and to generate electronic signals in the terahertz range with remarkable efficiency," explains Dr. Michael Gensch, whose group conducts research on ultrafast physics and operates the novel TELBE terahertz radiation source at the HZDR. And not only that -- their cooperation partners led by Prof. Dmitry Turchinovich, experimental physicist at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), have succeeded in describing the measurements quantitatively well using a simple model based on fundamental physical principles of thermodynamics. With this breakthrough, the researchers are paving the way for ultrafast graphene-based nanoelectronics: "We were not only able to experimentally demonstrate a long-predicted effect in graphene for the first time, but also to understand it quantitatively well at the same time," emphasizes Prof. Dmitry Turchinovich. "In my laboratory we have been investigating the basic physical mechanisms of the electronic nonlinearity of graphene already for several years. However, our light sources were not sufficient to actually detect and quantify the frequency multiplication clean and clear. For this, we needed experimental capabilities which are currently only available at the TELBE facility." The long-awaited experimental proof of extremely efficient terahertz high harmonics generation in graphene has succeeded with the help of a trick: The researchers used graphene that contains many free electrons, which come from the interaction of graphene with the substrate onto which it is deposited, as well as with the ambient air. If these mobile electrons are excited by an oscillating electric field, they share their energy very quickly with the other electrons in graphene, which then react much like a heated fluid: From an electronic "liquid," figuratively speaking, an electronic "vapor" forms within the graphene. The change from the "liquid" to the "vapor" phase occurs within trillionths of a second and causes particularly rapid and strong changes in the conductivity of graphene. This is the key effect leading to efficient frequency multiplication. The scientists used electromagnetic pulses from the TELBE facility with frequencies between 300 and 680 gigahertz and converted them in the graphene into electromagnetic pulses with three, five and seven times the initial frequency, i.e. up-converted them into the terahertz frequency range. "The nonlinear coefficients describing the efficiency of the generation of this third, fifth and seventh harmonic frequency were exceptionally high," explains Turchinovich. "Graphene is thus possibly the electronic material with the strongest nonlinearity known to date. The good agreement of the measured values with our thermodynamic model suggests that we will also be able to use it to predict the properties of ultrahigh-speed nanoelectronic devices made of graphene." Prof. Mischa Bonn, Director of the MPI-P, who was also involved in this work, emphasizes: "Our discovery is groundbreaking. We have demonstrated that carbon-based electronics can operate extremely efficiently at ultrafast rates. Ultrafast hybrid components made of graphene and traditional semiconductors are also conceivable." The experiment was performed using the novel, superconducting-accelerator-based TELBE terahertz radiation source at the ELBE Center for High-Power Radiation Sources at the HZDR. Its hundred times higher pulse rate compared to typical laser-based terahertz sources made the measurement accuracy required for the investigation of graphene possible in the first place. A data processing method developed as part of the EU project EUCALL allows the researchers to actually use the measurement data taken with each of the 100,000 light pulses per second. "For us there is no bad data," says Gensch. "Since we can measure every single pulse, we gain orders of magnitude in measurement accuracy. In terms of measurement technology, we are at the limit of what is currently feasible." The first authors of the article are the two young scientists Hassan A. Hafez (UDE/MPI-P) and Sergey Kovalev (HZDR).